Kolkata, June 10 (IANS): The Election Commission of India (ECI) has announced bypolls to four Assembly constituencies in West Bengal on July 10. The counting will be on July 13.
These four Assembly constituencies are Bagda in North 24 Parganas district, Ranaghat-Dakshin in Nadia district, Raiganj in North Dinajpur district and Maniktala in Kolkata.
The bye-election at Maniktala has been necessitated by the demise of the erstwhile Trinamool Congress legislator from there Sadhan Pande.
However, the most interesting is the reason for the bye-election for Bagda, Ranaghat-Dakshin and Raiganj.
The erstwhile BJP legislators from these three Assembly constituencies namely Biswajit Das from Bagda, Dr Mukut Mani Adhikari from Ranaghat-Dakshin and Krishna Kalyani from Raiganj, all of whom got elected in 2021, had to resign as the state Assembly members before the Lok Sabha polls this year since they contested as Trinamool Congress candidates from three Lok Sabha constituencies.
All three were defeated in the Lok Sabha elections. Now polls need to be conducted in the three Assembly constituencies.
However, insiders from the office of the CEO of West Bengal said that besides these four constituencies, bypolls will have to be conducted in six other constituencies within this year.
These six constituencies are in Cooch Behar district, Taldangra in Bankura district, Medinipur in West Midnapore district, Naihati and Haroa both in North 24 Parganas district and Madarihat in Alipurduar district.
Five Trinamool Congress legislators namely Jagadish Chandra Barma Basunia from Sitai, Arup Chakraborty from Taldangra, June Malia from Medinipur, Partha Bhowmik from Naihati and Haji Nurul Islam from Haroa have got elected this time to the Lok Sabha.
So they will now have to resign as MLAs which will necessitate bye-elections for these five assembly constituencies.
Similarly, bye-elections will have to be conducted at Madarihat as the elected BJP legislator from there Manoj Tigga this time successfully contested from the Alipurduar Lok Sabha and hence he will also have to resign as the MLA from Madarihat.